


Absolution

by orphan_account



Category: Thir13en Ghosts (2001)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-19
Updated: 2012-11-19
Packaged: 2017-11-19 02:10:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/567867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With the Juggernaut's help, the Jackal searches for a way to escape his imprisonment on Earth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The idea that the spirits are forced to remain as ghosts because they have sinned or been sinned against comes from the original 1960 version of _13 Ghosts_

Twelve ghosts had been brought into the strange glass mansion, but only eleven walked out.

In their first few moments of freedom, only one noticed that the Withered Lover was already gone. The last of the eleven to escape, Ryan Kuhn-- the Jackal-- had turned back towards the house as he danced into the woods surrounding it, and so he had been the only one of the spirits to see Jean Kriticos standing on the wheel of the Black Zodiac with her family. It was hard to tell from such a distance, but it looked as if she were no longer burned, and she was without the spectral IV bag to which she had been tethered. And then-- she had disappeared.

Ryan thought about it as he followed the other spirits into the woods. Had the Withered Lover been allowed to Ascend? And why did _she_ get to leave when the rest of them were stuck on Earth as ghosts? He was still mulling it over when he rejoined the rest some distance from the ruined mansion. The other ten displaced spirits appeared as lost as he felt. No one spoke for a long time; separated from the human world and from each other for so long, speech did not come easily.

"What. . . do we do now?" the Angry Princess finally asked.

Ryan looked at her without interest. Had she lived a century earlier, he might have been the one to kill her-- but she wouldn't have been the Angry Princess then, now would she? She would have just been. . . whatever her real name was, another victim of Ryan Kuhn, serial killer of women. Now that they were both dead, Ryan had little interest in her-- and even had she been a living woman, he probably would have done nothing to her, not after his time in the Asylum.  After all, to kill a person, you had to touch her first.

"Where's the other one of us? The Withered Lover?" the Pilgrimess rasped. Now _there_ was a real woman, Ryan mused. He wouldn't have killed someone like her even back during his salad days.

When no one else answered, Ryan drew back his ragged lips in a skull's grin. "Oh, she's gone," he said from within the cruel cage surrounding his head.

"Gone where?" The Pilgrimess turned her sharp, sunken eyes on him. "How do you know?"

"I saw her. She was standing on the wheel, watching the live ones. . . and then she vanished." He leaned forward and spread his claws at the Pilgrimess. "Poof." She grimaced and drew back like a grumpy grandma, making Ryan laugh out loud. If only he'd had a chaste old woman like that for a mother, instead of a slut.

"What happened to her?" the Princess asked Ryan, but he only shrugged.

"She Ascended." The Hammer spoke reverently, turning his eyes upward. "She must have."

It was the same thought Ryan had had, but it still made him uncomfortable. "Why her and not us?"

The Hammer did not reply but instead looked at the Pilgrimess for the answer. The woman smiled grimly and twisted her wrists in the stocks she wore.

"The debt against her was paid," she replied. "I should have understood at once. I have been on this Earth longer than the rest of you put together-- nigh 400 years-- and the story was well-known in my girlhood: how if a soul left its body with unresolved sin, it may not Ascend until its sins, or the sins against it, have been paid."

For the first time that evening, the monstrously large Juggernaut spoke. "What sins did that woman have?" Ryan looked at him and raised an eyebrow-- or at least raised the flesh where his eyebrow had once been.  The seven-foot-tall ghost seemed to be angry, though Ryan wasn't sure whether the anger was directed towards the Withered Lover or the One who had forbid her Ascension.

"None. That man--" They all knew the Pilgrimess meant Cyrus Kriticos. "--had been using her and her family since her death, and that was what held her here." The old spirit's thin lips twisted into a smile full of irony and bitterness. "And we absolved that sin for her."

Ryan tilted his caged head back and laughed aloud to think that Cyrus Kriticos being sliced into a hundred bits was anyone's salvation.

"Good for her," the Bound Woman said sarcastically. It was the first time she had spoken, and Ryan looked at her with even more derision than he held for the Angry Princess.  The Bound Woman may not have been an actual prostitute, but she certainly looked like one.  Even though her head lolled on her shoulder, its face was made up with heavy lipstick and eye shadow, and she wore some silly, trumped-up finery as a dress.

"Anyone care to absolve _my_ sin so I can get on with my afterlife?" she went on, rolling her eyes under heavy but perfectly-groomed brows.

The Angry Princess cut her own dark eyes at the other girl.  "I don't think there's a cure for being a whore," she said in a low voice.

" _You_ don't need to worry about _me_ ," said the Bound Woman.  Her tone was light, sweet, but there was poison beneath it. . . another reason Ryan disliked women.  "You have enough on your plate just trying to get over yourself."

Ryan tuned out the bickering and moved a few paces away from the others to think.  _So if I want to Ascend, all I have to do with is pay for my sins._ That sounded easy enough; Ryan thought he had made quite a large payment already with his time in the asylum.  Now that he was free, he just had to find something good to do, and--

A hand on Ryan's shoulder made him start and draw back. He looked up with a snarl into the Juggernaut's face.

The Juggernaut was almost two feet taller than Ryan.  Even his mangled head seemed huge.  Bullet holes pierced his wrinkled brow, his high cheeks, and his chin; viscous, garnet-red blood stood out against the bluish grey of his skin.  His eyes too were grey but with a silvery tint, sunk deep into his skull.  Although his hair still retained hints of blond, even it seemed to have greyed beyond his age.

"What?" Ryan hissed.

The Juggernaut just kept looking at him for a moment.  Ryan squirmed under his gaze, which was nearly as disquieting as his touch.

"What did it look like?" the larger spirit finally asked.  "When that woman Ascended."

Ryan shrugged, feeling the weight of his cage lift slightly when his shoulders supported it.  "She just disappeared."

"Was she scared?"

Although he was tempted to snap, _How should I know?_ , Ryan couldn't. . . because he _did_ know.  "No.  She looked happy."

The Juggernaut was quiet, and then Ryan realized that everyone else was too.  He turned, hunted, to the others and found all nine of them watching him and the larger ghost.

" _What_?"  His congealed blood could no longer flow, but Ryan imagined anyway that his cheeks grew hot at being so closely observed.

"She looked happy. . . ." repeated the Angry Princess.  "I want to go too."

"So do I!"  This time it was the First-Born Son who spoke.  Ryan looked down on him with disdain; he always had hated children.  "I wanna go home!" the boy went on in a nerve-grating whine.  "I want Mommy and Daddy!"

"Quiet, child," said the Pilgrimess.  The boy looked at her doubtfully, as if sizing up the strength of her will and patience, but she spoke next to all of them.  "Perhaps it is possible for us to quit this place, can we but open the Ocularis Infernum."

"That's mad," Ryan spat.

The Pilgrimess turned flint-like eyes on him.  "You said yourself that the Withered Lover stood there when she Ascended."

"It's the Eye of _Hell_ , not Heaven."  Ryan rolled his own mismatched eyes, one deep brown and the other the blue of winter.  "Besides, the Kriticos man _wanted_ us to open it-- and he hardly had our best interests at heart."

"Oh, and I suppose _you_ have a better idea?"  The Bound Woman looked at him as scornfully as he had regarded her.  _If only you weren't already dead,_ Ryan thought.  Petulantly, he decided then not to tell them the plan he had formed moments before.  Let them find their own way.

"Yes," he said.  As he turned away from them, half walking and half stalking in his odd, twisted gait, he heard the Hammer call after him.

"Stay!  It will take all of us to open the Ocularis!"

That was an occasion for laughter, and Ryan crowed before shouting behind him, "It needed thirteen ghosts!  Even if I stayed, we are only eleven.  You can replace me when you find another Withered Lover and Broken Heart."

No one hailed him after that, although as Ryan loped deeper into the woods, he heard mumbled words from some of them.  He didn't care what they thought, didn't mind if they hated him.  They were of no use to him.

No one hailed him, but in a moment, Ryan realized someone was following him.  Not by the sound of footsteps on the dead leaves below, but by the feeling of another spirit's presence.  Drawing his tattered lips back in a snarl, Ryan turned to face his pursuer.  He had to look up to do so.

"Where are you going?" the Juggernaut asked.

Ryan stared at him before replying.  "Away.  I don't need the rest of you."

He wondered if the reply might make the other spirit angry; rage had always seemed to be a key characteristic of the Juggernaut.  But the larger man only regarded Ryan flatly, as if too unintelligent to feel emotion at all.

"What's your better idea?"

"What?"  Ryan grew tired of being under the silvery gaze, and he writhed, looking down.  "Oh, about Ascending?  It's simple.  I just have to absolve my sins."

"Ab. . . solve?"

Of course.  He didn't know what it meant.

"Pay for them.  Do something good."  He met the Juggernaut's eyes again, with reluctance.  The gigantic spirit clearly did not yet understand. "The Pilgrimess said that we're still here because either someone did bad things to us and didn't pay for them. . . or _we_ did bad things and didn't pay.  We'll Ascend when those sins are paid for. . . absolved."

"Oh."  Comprehension dawned on the Juggernaut's long face.  "So you did bad things?  Or someone did bad things to you?"

The Jackal cringed, biting back the first remark that came to mind: that of _course_ he had done bad things.  He cringed because for the first time in a long while, he had been forced to remember the other sins, the ones against him.

"Both," Ryan said in a low voice.  "But it's the things I did that have kept me here, I'm sure." Now in a worse mood than before, he hissed, "Why did you follow me anyway?  What does it matter to you where I go?"

"I don't think the Ocu. . . the machine will work.  So I want to come with you instead."

Ryan stared at him.  "Why?  Why me?"

The Juggernaut shrugged.  "You were right before, when you said we could escape if we waited.  Maybe you're right now."

At first Ryan didn't know what he meant, then he remembered.  At one point in their imprisonment, shortly after the Juggernaut was captured, the Kriticos man had let the two of them-- and only the two of them-- loose in his house's basement.  The Juggernaut had wanted to rush the door, to escape. . . but Ryan knew better than to waste his ectoplasmic energy on an attempt doomed to failure.  He had advised the Juggernaut to wait until they all, all twelve, were loosed.

_Why did I tell **him** that?_ Ryan wondered at his own behavior.  _I could have let him wear himself ragged. . . .  Why did I help him?_

Aloud, he said, "Oh.  Well, even if you want to start doing good deeds, you don't need _me_."

"I think we might be better off if we stayed together."  No one else had ever said _that_ to Ryan before.

"Why?" he scoffed to hide his surprise. "I don't need anyone's help."

The Juggernaut's eyes flattened even more, and Ryan thought he saw one faint hint of anger.  "Really?  I could help you. . . .  I could get that cage off your head."

Ryan started, now consciously aware of the heavy cage as he had not been before.  "You can?" he asked with some skepticism.  He hated to ask for help. . . but oh, how tired he was of that cage!

The Juggernaut nodded.  "Hold still."  The larger spirit moved a little closer before reaching out and grasping the cage's frame; then he closed his eyes and pulled his hands apart.  Ryan cringed a little until he found himself staring at the sheer size of the muscles in the Juggernaut's upper arms.  No wonder he had been able to kill people so easily.

Ryan's doubts about the Juggernaut's strength faded as the rusty metal creaked and gave way in the other man's grip. The bolts holding the cage's sides to its bottom popped, and the Juggernaut tossed the body of the cage aside, leaving only its square bottom frame around Ryan's neck.

"Almost," the Juggernaut muttered. His fingers brushed Ryan's neck, making Ryan wince, as he folded his hands over two sides of the bottom frame and pulled again. Finally the metal came away, and Ryan's head was free for the first time in almost a century. He moaned softly and tilted his head back as he rubbed his neck. The Juggernaut watched him, still awkwardly clutching the remains of the head cage.

"See," he said.

Ryan's head felt a great deal lighter without the metal apparatus; he tossed his long hair back out of his face with a sense of relief. How long had it been since the last time he was truly free?

"Yes, thank you," the Jackal said, trailing his claws along his neck.  His eyes moved down the Juggernaut's considerable height, taking in the bullet-ridden and stained work shirt, the tattered jeans and scuffed boots.

"Where are you going?" the Juggernaut asked.

Ryan's eyes jerked back to the other spirit's face.  "I don't know.  I don't think I can travel very far-- it's like that man took all my energy when he captured me."

The Juggernaut was quiet for a moment, his own gaze crawling over Ryan's body.  The Jackal was for the first time self-conscious of his straitjacket with its gaping grommets and dangling scraps, and of his long and tangled hair.  _In his lifetime, he probably never met anyone who looked like me,_ thought Ryan.

Finally, the Juggernaut spoke again.  "In the junkyard, I spent all my spare time working on one of the old cars.  I wanted to make it run.  It was still there when. . . when I was captured."

"You're just full of surprises," Ryan murmured.  Still, it made sense that the Juggernaut would have worked in a junkyard when he was alive.  "Are you offering me a ride?"

"Yes," said the Juggernaut.  "If you help me do something good, so I can Ascend too."

Ryan had no idea where to start on his own good deeds, much less what must be done to help the Juggernaut.  Still, the Juggernaut didn't have to know that.  Let him keep his delusions about the Jackal's brilliance.

"All right," Ryan said, "it's a deal."

The Juggernaut dropped the remainder of Ryan's cage and stuck out a hand-- a massive hand that would have swallowed Ryan's entirely-- but Ryan only drew back.

"No handshake.  I don't like to be touched."

The Juggernaut's hand dropped to his side.

"How far away is this. . . your junkyard?"

"Ten miles," said the Juggernaut.  Ryan was amazed that someone so doltish had a precise grasp on distance.  "This house is nine miles from a town called Willow Grove.  My junkyard is in that town."  The Juggernaut lifted his arm once more to point in the same direction followed by the long driveway of the Kriticos mansion. "That way."

To Ryan, Ten miles sounded like a terrible distance to walk, even for a ghost.  _But I have no other options, unless I want to walk all the way to. . . back to Borehamwood, I guess._

"All right," he said again, following the Juggernaut's arm from its pointing finger back to the hulking figure of the other spirit.  "We'll go together."

\--

To be continued


	2. Chapter 2

"What's your name?"  The Juggernaut walked slowly down the driveway, away from Cyrus Kriticos's ruined mansion.  He moderated his longer steps to allow Ryan to keep up with him.  Besides simply being shorter than the Juggernaut's, Ryan's legs were twisted from the torture he'd endured during his imprisonment.  They forced his awkward gate, but Ryan had grown used to it in all the years since his death.

"Ryan."  He paused then elaborated, "Ryan Kuhn."  Still, he wished the Juggernaut wouldn't talk to him; in fact, he would have preferred to be alone.

"I'm Horace Mahoney."

"Mn," was all Ryan replied.  Apparently the Juggernaut got the hint, for he remained mostly quiet as they walked.  It took them over four hours to make the journey, but surprisingly, Ryan did not mind the time spent.  After being imprisoned in Kriticos's mansion, Ryan enjoyed being able to move freely.  And then there was the missing head cage.  The occasional night breeze, which might have been chilly to a human, sifted through his hair pleasantly.

At one point, Ryan looked up to study the Juggernaut's-- Horace's-- profile as the taller spirit stalked beside him.  The top of Ryan's head barely reached Horace's shoulder, and he had to tilt his head back to see the other man's face.  The Juggernaut's forehead seemed even longer when viewed from the side, and it hooded his deep-set eyes.  His blond hair was cut longer near the top of his head and shaved close near his neck.  Despite the wrinkles and awkward proportions of his face. . . he wasn't completely unattractive.

The Juggernaut's body was what most amazed Ryan, however.  Even the guards at the asylum had not been as tall or as broad.  Although the Juggernaut was gigantic, there was no fat or overweight on his body, only well-developed muscles easily seen through his tattered shirt.  To Ryan, slender and delicate, the Juggernaut held a strange fascination.

But then Horace glanced down at Ryan and found the Jackal watching him.  The Juggernaut's mouth opened slightly as a look both pleased and faintly puzzled passed through his eyes.  Embarrassed, Ryan bared his own teeth and looked straight ahead for the rest of their journey.

By the time they reached the edges of the junkyard, the sun was edging into the sky.  Ryan hissed at it; despite his ghostly status, the sun made his eyes hurt.  The junkyard gates were shut and locked, but the Juggernaut passed right through the metal bars.  _No containment spells here,_ Ryan thought.

"This was my dad's place," the Juggernaut said as he waited for Ryan to follow him inside.  "I was born here and grew up here.  And I died here."

_And you stayed here, haunted this place. . . like I did at the asylum.  I would still be there if not for Kriticos. . . ._   The usual hatred welled up within Ryan.

"Who killed you?" asked Ryan when he shook off his own thoughts.  With that many bullet holes, it couldn't have been suicide. . . .

"The police."  The Juggernaut started to walk through the yard, gesturing with one tremendous hand for Ryan to follow him.  "They found out what I did, and they came here to my home to kill me."

Ryan started to say that at least it had been quicker than _his_ imprisonment and death, but he stopped himself just in time.  He hadn't spent all of his life in one place only to be murdered there.

The Juggernaut led Ryan through a towering maze of stacked, crushed cars decorated with shiny yellow ticker-tape.  As they passed nearby, Ryan could see that the tape read "CRIME SCENE."  Near the gates was a small, run-down building which to Ryan looked more like a rectangular box than a house.  It sat under a light pole; even as Ryan looked, the light flickered out in response to the rising sun.  The Juggernaut cast a dark look at the little building, and Ryan wondered if Horace had once lived there.

A few more turns through the towers of cars brought them to a ramshackle garage.  Ryan glanced at it but not for long.  Instead, his attention was captured by Horace's car, which sat just past the garage.

"This is _it_?"  The car was a chassis of indeterminate make resting on dirty cinderblocks. Ryan didn't know much about modern cars-- only what he had picked up in his afterlife before Kriticos captured him-- but he knew this one certainly wouldn't run.  His hopes, dark as they had been, nearly shattered.

"Yes, this is my car."  Horace actually seemed _proud_ of the thing.  "I didn't get finished working on it before-- before _he_ got me."  The Juggernaut clenched his huge fists at his sides. "That son of a bitch. . . he sprayed blood everywhere, all over my home, then he trapped me--"

Ryan, not really listening, kicked at the car.  Later he wasn't even sure why he had done it; mostly out of disappointment, he assumed, and anger at Horace for producing a car that wouldn't get him anywhere.  But for the first time, he saw the Juggernaut's anger blossom into the full force of rage-- and that rage was turned on Ryan.

"Don't touch my car!" the Juggernaut roared, grabbing Ryan's shoulders and forcibly throwing him up against the garage's dented tin side.  Ryan felt a jolt through his twisted body as his back and head slammed into contact with the metal wall.  Horace pinned Ryan there, towering over him. " _Leave it alone!_ "  Fury rose in Ryan as well, but stronger than that was his aversion to being touched.  His dead skin crawled under his straitjacket where Horace's hands had grasped him.

"Don't touch _me_!" Ryan shrieked back, clawing at Horace's broad chest. "Let me go, you imbecile!"  He slashed out at the Juggernaut's face, drawing blackish blood from one of the gunshot wounds there. Horace howled and let Ryan go; he clapped one hand to his face as he stepped back visibly seething.

"Nothing I do to that piece of junk is going to hurt it!" screeched Ryan with a wild gesture at the immobile vehicle.  "You said you had a _car_ , not. . . not this!"

The Juggernaut's shoulders heaved as he rubbed his hand over his face; it came away smeared with blood which Horace wiped on his shirt.  "It _is_ a car.  It will be.  I just need some more time."

Ryan shook his head in disgust. "I've already spent enough time trapped on this Earth.  If this is all the help you can offer, we're _not_ better off together.  I'll get there faster on my own."

The larger spirit gave him an eerie searching look.  Ryan imagined what he might be thinking: that the Jackal would never make it on his twisted legs, ghost or not.  But the Juggernaut said nothing as his face worked; it seemed he was trying to control his anger.  Without speaking again, the giant spirit walked away, turning into the small garage.  Ryan jumped when he heard a fearsome crash from within the building.

_Did he knock something over?  Or. . . did he throw it?_   The Jackal felt a shiver worm through his body.  _Why should I be frightened of **him**?_ he scolded himself.

It wasn't until he was alone and had stood in silence for some minutes that Ryan realized just how exhausted he was. He hadn't exactly needed sleep after his death; at least he didn't think it was sleep because he never dreamed. Yet after any period of sustained activity, he had needed to stay dormant for awhile; and the past evening had been the most active period of his afterlife. The sun, now encroaching upon the junkyard, seemed to sap his energy even more.

With reluctance, Ryan walked around to the front of the garage and peered in.  It must have been unused by anyone but Horace since his death: a thick layer of dust covered everything, and there was no sign of human life, not even an empty soda can or food wrapper. The Juggernaut was sitting on the edge of a cot set up in the back of garage, past stacks of tools and metal parts.  He was staring at something tacked to the wall.

Ryan watched him a moment before speaking.  "Is this where you lived?" It was as close as he could come to apologizing.

Horace looked at Ryan then back at the wall.  "Yeah, since Dad died.  No one ever came out here, just me and my dogs.  Even after the cops killed me, I stayed."

Ryan walked over to see what was so absorbing on the wall. It turned out to be a calendar, and although Ryan had no idea what year it now was, the calendar looked to be several years old.  There were brightly colored, modern cars on it.

"I wanted to be a driver when I was a kid," Horace explained when he saw Ryan looking at the calendar.

"A. . . driver?"

"Race cars."  The Juggernaut pointed a long, thick finger at the picture.  "I wanted to race in a car like this.  That's why I started making a car for myself."

Ryan tried to think of a reply, but his tired mind couldn't focus. He wobbled a little on his feet; Horace reached out a hand towards him but withdrew it without touching Ryan.

"Lie down." Horace shifted on the cot until he lay against the wall, leaving room for Ryan on the other side.  Ryan felt as if he should refuse, but he was too exhausted to care.  He sank down onto the cot and lay back with a groan.  A night of attacking and traveling had taken its toll on him.

The cot was wide-- probably to have accommodated the living Horace's size.  There was enough space for Ryan, diminutive as he was, to curl up without touching the other spirit.  He drew his legs to his chest in a convoluted fetal position with his back to the Juggernaut.

"Thank you," Ryan mumbled into a curtain of his own hair.  If the Juggernaut replied, the Jackal was unconscious in the ghostly version of sleep before he heard.

\--

When Ryan awoke, the small room was almost dark, and Horace was gone.  Ryan lay on the cot a long time, hardly thinking but simply absorbing the feeling of awakening free.  No small containment cell. . . and no reminders of Borehamwood, whose site he had haunted for so many decades past.  He wondered if he would even want to go back had it not been his chance of salvation.

Intermittently, a clanking sound would come from outside; Ryan guessed that it was Horace, working on his car.  _The car_ , the Jackal thought.  _He can't possibly make that thing run._

Nevertheless, Ryan got up to observe the Juggernaut's progress.  The whole day had passed while Ryan slept, and the sun was nearly set.  Ryan snarled in its general direction.  In its place, most of the light by which Horace worked came from a flickering light pole surrounded by flying insects.  As the Jackal looked up, he saw a bat dart in on them, feasting.

Horace had the car's hood up and was kneeling in front, tall enough to reach in comfortably even while on his knees.  Ryan stood and watched the other spirit, ragged and bullet-ridden yet with a look of quiet peace on his face as his large hands, seemingly too awkward for such delicate work, tinkered with the innards of the car. 

"Have you made any progress?" Ryan asked after looking for some time.

Horace looked at Ryan, hardly having to glance up to meet his eyes.  "Not much.  I had to check it over first-- thought someone might've messed it up while I was. . . gone.  But it looks okay.  I can start working on it now."

Ryan walked around the car, careful to keep his feet well away from it.  When he reached the driver's door, the Jackal put a hand to it slowly with his eyes on Horace; however, the Juggernaut made no motion to stop him.  Feeling as if an uneasy truce had been made, Ryan opened the door and sat down inside.

The Jackal let his warped legs dangle out of the driver's door as he looked around the car's interior.  The car had a roof and a windshield with a single crack through it, but the side windows had long before been broken out.  The cover of the driver's seat was discolored from years of being rained on. Ryan poked at it absent-mindedly, and his claw-like fingernail went right through the thin fabric.  Ryan folded his hands in his lap and hoped Horace wouldn't notice the damage.

"How long do you think it will take to get this running?" Ryan asked.

"I don't know." A scraping noise came from under the car. Ryan leaned out of the door just in time to see most of Horace's long frame disappearing below the chassis.

"If you get stuck under there, I'm not hauling you out," added Ryan.

"We're going to need gas," Horace's voice issued from somewhere beneath the car. "And a battery.  I can get that from one of the other cars here. . . but can you go fill up a gas can?"  He seemed to have forgotten-- or to be ignoring-- Ryan's claim that they would be better off apart.

Ryan leaned down, head between his feet and long hair dusting the ground, to look under the car. He could just make out Horace's pale face in the shadows there.  "'Fill up a gas can'?  Me?"

"Yeah."

"How do I do _that_?"

Horace didn't seem to understand the question. "There's a can in the garage.  We passed the gas station last night.  It's just down the road.  Just fill up the can and--"

"I don't know how," Ryan interrupted.  He added, indignant, "I certainly never worked at a filling station when I was alive!"

There was a heavy sigh from under the car, and Horace wriggled his way out again. He sat back on his heels before the front bumper and wiped at the dirt on his face.

"You died a long time ago, didn't you?" he asked.

"That isn't very polite.  But yes, it was a long time ago."

"Oh. Well, people usually pump their own gas now," Horace explained. "I'll go with you and show you how to do it."

"Why don't _you_ go alone and do it yourself?" countered Ryan.

"No, you need to know how to take care of the car," Horace insisted.  Ryan wasn't sure he would ever have to put those skills to use, considering the state of the car.  Still, Horace had confidence in it. . . and considering his earlier rage, Ryan decided to humor him.

"Wait here."  The Juggernaut stepped back into the garage and emerged with a bright red plastic can carried in one huge hand.  "Let's go," he said over his shoulder to Ryan as he started weaving his way through the stacks of cars.  Ryan scowled at having to hurry to keep up. . . but he knew he'd never find his way out of the maze of the junkyard on his own.

Horace passed through the yard's gates again, can and all.  Ryan followed, wondering if a human would be able to see the can floating down the road all by itself.   _Horace probably never thinks about things like that,_ Ryan mused.

They reached the gas station in about fifteen minutes, where Horace walked up to a barred window of the small, dingy building and looked in.

"The clerk's asleep," the Juggernaut announced as he returned to Ryan.  "We won't have to kill him."

"Oh."  Ryan supposed he should have been disappointed. . . but he really wasn't.  The thought of killing just didn't appeal to him at the moment.  He watched as Horace walked over to one of the gas pumps and looked down at it.  A curl of blonde hair fell over his broad, blue-tinged forehead as he studied the pump intently.

"Don't you know how to use it?" prompted Ryan when Horace didn't move.

"Yeah."  The Juggernaut looked up and gestured Ryan closer.  "Come here so I can show you how to use it."  Ryan edged over to the pump and stopped several feet to Horace's left, but the larger spirit wasn't satisfied.

"You can't see anything from there."  Horace stepped back a pace and gestured again.  "Get in front of me."

Ryan cringed and looked up at him.

"I won't touch you," Horace murmured.

The Jackal still hesitated, but he knew they wouldn't get anywhere if he didn't comply.  It looked as if the Juggernaut was willing to stay there all night until Ryan did what he wanted.

"All right."  Ryan slipped into the space between Horace and the pump, facing the machine.  "So how does it work?"

A long arm reached out beside Ryan to point at the screen.  "You want to mash the button beside where it says 'Pay Inside.'  Otherwise you have to use a credit card.  And we don't have one."

"What's a credit card?"  Ryan watched the huge arm out of the corner of his eye.  It was dangerously close to his cheek.

"Uh. . . never mind.  Just don't push the button for credit card."

Ryan lifted his own small hand and pushed the "Pay Inside" button with one claw.  The print on the screen changed to read "Select Grade and Remove Nozzle."

"Now you have to tell it what kind of gas you want."  Horace brought up his left arm on Ryan's other side and gestured to a very large yellow button with the number 89 on it.  "Get that one."

The whole process was so foreign to Ryan, he wondered that Horace was intelligent enough to decipher it.  Ryan pushed this second button with his claw, at the same time trying to make himself smaller within the confines of Horace's two arms.

"Now we can pump the gas."  Horace pointed his right hand at a bulky nozzle affixed to one side of the pump.  "Take that out and stick it in the can."

Ryan put one hand on the nozzle, which dwarfed his delicate fingers.  Despite his tugging, it only jiggled slightly in its housing.  Ryan glared at it and tried with both hands, with no success, which left him growling in frustration.

"Here, you have to lift it up."  Horace leaned in, pressing his chest to Ryan's back and head, and at the same time covered Ryan's hands in his own.  Ryan's entire body went rigid, and he drew in a hiss of breath between his sharp teeth.

Ryan thought he could feel the muscles in Horace's chest against his own back, conjuring up memories of what a human body felt like before he shredded it with his claws.  The Juggernaut's hand though had no counterpart in Ryan's memories.  No one had ever held his hand like that before.  Horace's touch was so different now than it had been earlier, when he had grasped Ryan's shoulders in fury.  It baffled Ryan to realize that not all touches came with evil intent towards him.

Oblivious to Ryan's thoughts, Horace grasped his hands and helped him lift the awkward nozzle from the pump.  
  
"There, you just gotta lift it right," the Juggernaut said.  "It's kind of heavy.  Now stick that end in the can."

"Let go," Ryan rasped.  It was a mostly automatic reaction: although Ryan was cringing, trying to withdraw from the almost-human contact. . . part of him craved it.  Part of him thought Horace felt good behind and around him. _What's wrong with me?_ Ryan wondered through a haze that was almost familiar-- almost like when he killed, but not quite.

"Hunh?"

"Let _go_."  Ryan, as disgusted at himself as he was at Horace's touch, pressed himself against the gas pump.  Though unfamiliar to him, it was inanimate and unyielding. . . safe.

"Oh."  Horace's hand slipped away from Ryan's, and the larger spirit withdrew.  "Sorry.  I forgot."  When the Juggernaut was some distance away, Ryan shifted the heavy nozzle until he could put it into the mouth of the gas can.

"Now squeeze that handle on the nozzle," Horace directed in a flatter voice than before, "until the can fills up."  Ryan duly squeezed-- it took both of his hands to do it-- and braced himself as gasoline flowed from the nozzle into the can.  He managed to replace the nozzle by himself after the can was full.

"See how to do it?" Horace asked when Ryan had finished.  "It's not hard."

"Yes."  Ryan turned away and drifted some yards from the Juggernaut.  Horace was quiet a moment as Ryan stood with hunched shoulders, hating himself for wanting the very touch he feared.

"We need to leave before the clerk wakes up and notices the pump's been used," Horace finally said.  Ryan looked back as the Juggernaut picked up the gasoline can-- now heavy with liquid-- and trudged off in the direction of the junkyard.

Ryan cocked his head and watched the tall figure moving away from him.  He had expected Horace to ask questions or demand an explanation.  But no, the Juggernaut let the matter drop.

_Maybe there's more to him than I thought,_ Ryan mused.  Finally he followed the Juggernaut and the bright red can of stolen gas back to the junkyard.

\--

to be continued


	3. Chapter 3

Horace did not speak on their walk back to the junkyard or as they worked their way back inside, through the maze of discarded items.  Back at the garage, Ryan sat on the ground, leaning against the building, and watched as the Juggernaut did various things to the car.  Ryan didn't understand any of them until Horace poured in the gas they had stolen.

"I'll be back," Horace said after that.  He slouched off somewhere amidst the towers of cars; when he returned, he was carrying something boxy in his large hands.

"What's that?" asked Ryan.  To his own surprise, he was curious about what Horace was doing. . . and equally surprising, he wanted Horace to talk to him.  The Juggernaut's silence had an eerie quality to it, as if it hid something like a covered pot hid boiling water.

"It's a battery.  It gives the car power to run."  Horace looked down at Ryan's huddled form and actually smiled.  It was a faint smile, just a slight twitch of the Juggernaut's large mouth, but it was enough to convey his pleasure at Ryan's interest.

Horace went to the car's hood and connected the battery inside.  When he was finished, he walked around to the driver's door, pulling a screwdriver out of a pocket in his jeans.  The slender tool was dwarfed in Horace's hand.  The Juggernaut glanced at Ryan once more and spoke when he found the Jackal watching.

"We'll have to start it with this. Don't have a key."  Horace folded himself into the driver's seat.  His actions were hidden from Ryan, but a moment later, miraculously, the car roared to life.  Ryan winced at the engine noise, yet it was pleasing too.

_I really might be able to get back to Borehamwood._

The results of his efforts pleased Horace as well.  He turned the car off and extracted his long frame from within.

"I still have to do some work to it," the Juggernaut said, "but in a couple days, I think it'll run."  He walked around the car and looked at it from all angles, muttering to himself.  "Needs some good tires though."  Despite this pronouncement, Horace turned away from the car and lowered himself to the ground a few feet from Ryan.  He braced his broad back against the side of the garage then looked at the Jackal.  "Where do you want to go, anyway?"

Ryan looked away from the other spirit. "I was thinking about the asylum-- where I died.  It burned down and they rebuilt it, but. . . ."  He trailed off, not wanting to admit that he simply didn't have a better idea.

"Do you think you can do something good there, so you'll Ascend?"  Horace asked.

Ryan shrugged.  "It's a place to start."

"Do you know what I could do?" said Horace after they were quiet a moment.  "To Ascend, I mean."

Ryan had no answer for him.  In fact, until that point, the Jackal had completely forgotten that his part of their bargain was to help Horace.

"Not yet," Ryan finally admitted.  "I don't know what _I_ can do.  It was different for the Withered Lover-- Kriticos was holding her here.  But we. . . we're holding ourselves, with our sins."

"We'll figure it out."

Ryan looked up in surprise at Horace's optimism.  For some reason, it reminded him of how the Juggernaut's touch had felt.  _It's as if there's something good left in him,_ the Jackal thought.  _Has anyone else ever seen it?_

"Horace," he said aloud, hesitating.  "This might not work.  I don't know how to help you."  He expected for Horace to point out that Ryan had lied when he promised aid in exchange for transportation.  But the Juggernaut only shrugged.

"I didn't think you would."  Horace turned his head to look at Ryan again, who was now staring at him.

"What do you mean, you didn't think I'd know?"  Ryan was somewhat offended, although he knew he really had no business feeling any affront.  Horace was right, after all.  "Why did you let me come with you, then?"

"I still think you're right about us doing something good, even if you don't know how to do it," Horace explained.  His eyes, sunken as they were, seemed to be penetrating Ryan's own gaze.  "And. . . ."  He paused, searching Ryan's face.  "And I was lonely."

"Lonely?"  Ryan meant to say the word with derision: killers weren't supposed to feel lonely.  Neither were ghosts.  But then, Ryan too was both killer and ghost, and he knew how it felt to be alone.  Alone in his cell in the asylum, alone in his glass prison in the mansion's basement.  So instead of derisive, the word came out with sympathy.

Horace nodded.  He didn't need to say anything else.

A little uncomfortable with the subject, Ryan mumbled, "I could help you with the car at least.  I could find some tires."

"Okay."  Horace was still watching Ryan, and the Jackal shifted in place, keeping his eyes turned down.  "Look for ones that aren't too worn looking.  They need to still have good treads on 'em. . . .  Uh, do you know what treads are?"

"Um. . . ."

"They're the ridges on the tire, around the edge.  The part that goes on the ground."

"Mn.  All right."  Ryan got to his feet, still not looking at Horace.  He wanted to get away from the other spirit, because he kept thinking about what the Juggernaut had said about feeling lonely.  The Jackal was starting to feel like he had been lonely too, and he didn't want to think about that.

Instead, Ryan spent the rest of the night wandering around the junkyard and collecting a few decent-looking tires into a pile.  The tires were heavy to Ryan, perhaps twenty-five pounds each, and he was exhausted when he had finished near dawn.  Ryan hefted a single tire in his twisted arms and started back towards Horace and the car.  Instead of his usual bouncing walk, his gait was slow and torturous.

When Ryan trudged up to the car, Horace was still working under the hood.  He looked up at Ryan's approach and even smiled.  The gesture looked out of place on his torn face, and it drew Ryan's eyes to the Juggernaut's lips.  They were surprisingly full for a man-- far different from Ryan's thin, torn mouth-- and were a deeper shade of blue than the rest of Horace's flesh.

"That one looks good." Horace straightened up and came to Ryan; he took the tire from the Jackal, holding it up and examining the treads.  Ryan looked up at him, envying the ease with which Horace handled the heavy tire.

"Are there more?" the Juggernaut asked.  
  
"Yes, five more.  I. . . didn't want to bother bringing the others over until I knew they were suitable."  No need for Horace to know that Ryan couldn't have carried more than one at a time anyway.

Horace seemed to know anyhow.  "Where are they?  I'll carry them."  Ryan led Horace to the pile of tires, where to Ryan's embarrassment Horace picked up all three and carried them back to the car.  "They're perfect," Horace assured him.  "I'll put them on the car tonight."

Ryan glanced at the sky to see the sun rising between the towers of smashed cars.  "Yes, I don't like being out in the daytime."  He slunk into the garage with Horace following him.  Ryan watched as the Juggernaut lay down on one side of his cot, again leaving room for the Jackal.

_I'm certainly not alone anymore,_ he thought.  He lowered himself to the cot beside Horace, marveling that he was about to spend a second day scant inches from another person-- ghost or not.  Up until he had entered this strange truce with the Juggernaut, Ryan had only gotten that close to kill.

The Jackal fell into unconsciousness, but he woke again in mid-afternoon.  Even with his eyes closed, he could sense the sunlight slanting in through gaps in the walls.  The light shone as a deep burgundy through Ryan's thin eyelids.

After a moment, he realized what had awakened him.  He was lying on his back on the cramped cot-- and someone was touching him.  Ryan could feel a gigantic hand stroking his hair.

Ryan stayed perfectly still, his eyes and teeth clenched shut, trying to overcome his aversion.   _It's not a nurse. . . not a woman. . . just another ghost. Just Horace,_ he thought. The Juggernaut's hand felt rough and awkward in his hair, petting Ryan as if he were a dog.   _It's all right,_ Ryan kept telling himself as he finally began to relax.   _It's okay. . . ._

Then Horace's fingertips brushed his cheek.  Ryan tensed all over again, breath hissing through his teeth as a tremor went through his body.  He opened his eyes and stared up into Horace's face.

"What?" the Juggernaut asked.

"I _told_ you." Ryan closed his eyes again and bit at his ragged lip. "I don't like being touched.  By anyone."

" _Why?_ "

At first Ryan shook his head and started to say he didn't know. . . but he _did_ know.  He just didn't like to think about it.  "It. . . it makes me feel bad. Dirty."

"Why?" Horace asked again.  "No one ever _wanted_ to touch me, not even my father."

Ryan opened his eyes once more, narrowing them at Horace.  He understood that Horace wasn't trying to incite him, but the Juggernaut's words seemed to minimize Ryan's feelings.  _Like I should feel sorry for him, that he didn't have nurses putting their filthy hands all over him!_

"My mother was a whore," Ryan snarled.  "That's the whole reason I exist-- someone _touched_ her.   _I_ was the accident that came out of it.  That's all the world needs, don't you think?  More Ryan Kuhns!"

"Ryan. . . ."  Horace's puzzled expression showed that he didn't quite follow Ryan's reasoning.  "You're dead.  And you're not a woman.  You can't have a baby."

Ryan groaned.  "I know that.  It's psychological-- you wouldn't understand."  Yet his real frustration came from the fact that everything Horace had said was perfectly logical.  It proved how unfounded Ryan's fears were.

Horace was finally quiet then, his bullet-ridden forehead creased in thought. His fingers moved slowly against Ryan's cheek, stroking the other spirit's skin in a hypnotic motion.  As at the gas station, his touch felt good; Ryan wanted to lean his cheek into Horace's hand.

Before he did just that, Ryan hissed through clenched teeth, "Please.  Stop."

Horace finally drew back his hand.  A hurt look passed through his deep-set eyes, and that only increased Ryan's irritation.  Couldn't Horace understand anything Ryan had said?  _It's not just you,_ Ryan thought.  _I don't want **anyone** to touch me._

 Ryan turned away to lie on his side with his back to Horace.

"Get some rest," he muttered, "while the sun's still up."

After Horace had been quiet for some time, Ryan looked over his shoulder at the larger spirit; the Juggernaut had fallen into the ghosts' version of sleep.  Without meaning to, Ryan's mismatched eyes traveled over the broad chest of the other ghost. The myriad bullet holes that had taken Horace's life were caked with blood, though they seemed not to give Horace any pain, just as Ryan no longer felt the self-inflicted claw marks on his forehead.  New wounds, however, hurt just as much as when he had been alive.

Ryan frowned, his thoughts shifting to Horace's touch.  Why had the sensation been almost pleasant underneath the old fear?  Why was it Horace who made Ryan feel this way?

_Maybe because he's the closest thing to a friend I've ever had._   The Jackal grimaced and turned away again, closing his eyes.  _Now isn't that pathetic._

\--

To be continued  



	4. Chapter 4

The next few days passed slowly.  Horace kept working on the car, and Ryan had little to do but watch.  Occasionally he would consider leaving the junkyard for a while, but then he'd realize, _What is there for me to do out there, either?_   Kill people, maybe, but that would be counter-productive to doing something good.  And besides. . . Ryan just didn't _feel_ like killing anyone.  He didn't have the energy.

One morning, finally, Horace told Ryan that the car was running.

"I dunno how _well_ it'll run," the Juggernaut admitted.  He was stretched out on his side of the cot, and Ryan was curled up on his.  "But as long as your asylum isn't _too_ far away. . . we should make it."

"That's not encouraging, Horace."  Ryan sighed, but he spoke without rancor.  Besides feeling too lethargic to go hunting, Ryan had softened towards Horace as well.  As much as he scorned himself for wanting company, the Jackal had gotten used to their mostly silent companionship.  Horace hadn't tried to touch him again, and when he talked, it wasn't to ask annoying questions-- only to tell Ryan the occasional story.  Most of these were dull tales of Horace's childhood.  Ryan preferred it when Horace talked about the pet dogs he had had, a motley assortment of strays Horace had rescued and cared for.

What amazed Ryan was that Horace had clearly loved his dogs.  On them he showered all the affection he had stored up, having no one else to take care of.  Horace had fed them before himself (at least until he had started killing, and dog food was easy to come by), and he named them all and knew their personalities.  However, Horace never said what had happened to the dogs, who had clearly disappeared from the junkyard.  Ryan didn't ask.

"I told you I'd give you a ride, Ryan," Horace said now.  "We'll get there."  It was still strange to Ryan to hear his name spoken aloud; it had been decades since anyone had called him by name.

After the two spirits rested throughout the day, Ryan got up at dusk.  Horace was still unconscious when Ryan stood; the Jackal looked down at the Juggernaut's massive form before he went outside.  Ryan was crouching by the garage, looking at the car, when Horace emerged.  Ryan got to his feet and joined the other spirit at the car's side, where Horace knelt and examined one of the tires.

"Where is the asylum?" Horace asked, glancing up at Ryan.

"Carcer City.  I. . . don't exactly know where it is," Ryan admitted.  "When Kriticos caught me and brought me here, I couldn't see where we were going."

"It's okay; I know where Carcer City is.  Well, sort of-- my dad took me there once, to pick up some stuff.  They got a really nice junkyard."  Horace almost looked wistful.

"How far away is it?"

"I think just a couple hours."  Horace duck-walked past Ryan to check the car's back tires.  "We can make it."

In an hour's time, Horace was certain he had the car in shape for the trip.  The sun had completely set, and only the flickering street light over the garage illuminated them.  Horace wedged himself into the driver's seat and used his screwdriver to start the car.  Standing in front, Ryan saw its headlights come to life.  They cast a yellowish light on the ground, Ryan, and the towers of junked cars behind him.  Ryan put an arm up to block their light as he stumbled around to the passenger door.

"Are you _sure_?" he asked Horace, leaning down to look at the Juggernaut through the open door.

Horace nodded.  "Trust me, Ryan."

_I've never trusted anybody, and I'm not starting with you,_ Ryan thought.  Still, he got in the car; after all, it couldn't actually hurt him.  If it broke down, he supposed he'd at least be that much closer to Borehamwood.  _Really_ trusting Horace-- like letting him touch Ryan-- was a different story.

Horace drove the car slowly, steering it in a creep through the maze of junk until he reached the junkyard gates.  They were still locked, held together with a heavy chain and a padlock that looked well suited to Horace's large hands.

"The Torn Prince had a ghost car," Horace sighed as he opened his door.  "It could just drive through here. . . ."  Ryan watched as the Juggernaut trudged to the gates and fumbled with the lock.  Earlier, Horace had explained that the lock was new, placed on the gates just after his death.  Horace had brought a huge pair of bolt cutters to cut its thick shackle.  
  
Ryan marveled at the muscles in Horace's arms as the Juggernaut easily cut off the lock and dragged the bulky chain off the gates.  The chain made a clanging sound that echoed through Ryan and deep into the junkyard, and he winced when Horace tossed it aside with a clatter.  The Juggernaut swung the tall gates open and returned to the car.

They left the gates open and unlatched when they drove away.  Most humans were too scared by the junkyard's reputation to enter. . . and even if they did, there wasn't much worth taking inside.  Ryan suspected that even Horace didn't place value on much of what he left behind.  The car seemed to be all that he cared about.

During the two and a half hours it took them to drive to Carcer City, the spirits spoke little.  Ryan looked out the window, half-heartedly watching for landmarks although he didn't expect to recognize anything.  He had been in Carcer a long time, but as he had told Horace, he couldn't see when he was shipped out in his glass cage like so much cargo.  _And the last time I passed through the outskirts was decades ago. . . ._

As dark trees flew by the sides of the back road Horace had taken, leaves black and deep blue lit only by a pale moon, Ryan's thoughts turned to his mission: to pay for his sins, because _his_ sins must be what held him there, not the sins against him.  After all, everyone who had wronged Ryan was long dead and Ascended themselves-- his mother, her johns and pimps, the doctors and nurses at Borehamwood.

_But even my sins **are** the answer. . . well, how can I make peace with a hooker I killed four score ago?_   Ryan sighed and looked into the window's reflection of his own mismatched eyes.   _And anyway. . .  if she had lived, she just would have made more people like me._

"Ryan?"  Horace spoke for the first time a while, possibly in response to Ryan's sigh.

The Jackal turned his head to look at the Juggernaut.  "What."

"How did you end up in an asylum?  Did they catch  you?"

"No."  Ryan looked away, out the window once more.  "I committed myself.  I wanted to stop killing."

"Oh."  Did Horace sound a little disappointed?  "What made you want to stop?"

Ryan shrugged, rattling the straps and grommets on his straitjacket.  "I knew it was wrong.  I _always_ knew it was wrong, and by then, I knew it wasn't going to. . . fix anything."

"What were you trying to fix?"

"Why are you so full of questions all of a sudden?" growled Ryan.  Horace was beginning to remind him of the doctors in Borehamwood, the ones who tried talk therapy on Ryan-- before they tried the shock therapy.

"I want to know more about you," Horace said.  That merited another stare from Ryan, but the Juggernaut's eyes were fixed on the road ahead.

" _Why_?"

Finally Horace glanced at him, cutting his deep-set eyes sideways.  "Because I like you."

"You _like_ me?"  To Ryan Kuhn, who had never had what could be called a friend, this was unthinkable.

"Yes."  Horace didn't elaborate, and Ryan was too embarrassed to press the issue.  And anyway, that might lead Horace to ask how Ryan felt about _him_. . . and the Jackal didn't know how to answer that.

Instead, he turned back to the window, remembering what had happened _after_ he had committed himself, after his "treatments," after his death.

After the fire had killed his human body, his spirit remained, trapped on Earth.  To make the situation worse, Ryan's ghostly body was hardly different from his human one. He still wore the ragged restraints, still bore the claw marks he had made on his own skin, still suffered the crooked limbs caused by the doctors' cruelty.  Worst of all, Ryan still bore the heavy iron cage on his head. He had been confused; though he knew he must be dead, he was sentient, conscious and suffering.  And he was lost.  All his life there had been someone to tell him what to do: his mother, her pimps, the doctors. . . even the whores screaming for him to stop as he was murdering them.  But there is no one to direct the dead.

So the spirit of Ryan Kuhn-- decades away from becoming the Jackal, the eleventh ghost-- had haunted the spot where Borehamwood burned to the ground. In the days after the fire, he watched the police find his remains in the ashes, and he laughed because all they really got were some scorched bones and an iron cage.   The days turned to weeks, and architects came to the site to measure where the building once stood.  They were rebuilding the asylum.

Ryan heard one of the architects murmur his name as part of a hushed story of Borehamwood's history, and he laughed again.  Over the next two years, the new asylum rose literally from the ashes of Borehamwood, but this time they called it Deadwood.

Although Deadwood's façade had been updated from Borehamwood's, the floor plan was the same.  As the new building rose around him, Ryan walked the halls from the basement where his cell had been, climbing as stairs were added, standing on the roof when the building was finished.

Ryan had never killed any of the patients, not even the women; he felt too much pity for them.  In fact, he might have helped them, but there had been nothing he could do.  Setting them free would have only led to their recapture. . . and probably to punishment as well.  Some of the patients were even aware of Ryan's presence, but of course no one had listened to them.

The staff though, the guards and nurses and doctors. . . Ryan had no qualms about frightening them, getting the lower ranking staff in trouble with their superiors, and killing those who abused the patients.  The powers that be never acknowledged that Deadwood was haunted, but that didn't stop the rumors.  Most of those rumors named Ryan Kuhn as the culprit, and soon the legend had spread that anyone who treated a patient cruelly would become his victim.

Because the rumors were true in every aspect, even the most pig-headed and vicious of the staff eventually quit abusing those in their care, and by the time Cyrus Kriticos captured Ryan, he had not killed in two years.

_Wasn't that an absolution of my sins?_ Ryan wondered.  _That **was** something good, stopping the abuse.  Unless it didn't work because I killed to do it. . . ._

When Horace's car finally rattled its way into Carcer City, Ryan realized he had no idea how to find the asylum.  The city had changed so much since Ryan had roamed it free; now he couldn't find his way around.

"Which way should I go?" Horace asked.  They were stopped at a traffic light on the edge of town.  The streets on all sides of them were empty, puzzling Ryan.  Carcer hadn't been a _huge_ city when he was free, but even at this late hour, he had expected to see at least some other people around.

"I don't know."  Ryan slumped back in his seat.  "I guess just look for a sign that says Boreham-- Deadwood."

"Hunh?"  Horace looked at him.

"Deadwood," Ryan repeated, digging his claws into his straitjacket.  He felt irritated at Horace, although it wasn't the larger spirit's fault for being confused-- Ryan hadn't explained the rebuilding of the asylum to him.  Still, Ryan growled when he clarified, "They rebuilt it after it burned, and they changed the name."

"Oh."  To Ryan's relief, Horace said nothing else as he edged the dilapidated car past the light once it turned green.

_I know why I don't want to talk to him-- because he likes me._   Ryan realized now that it made him uncomfortable to know Horace cared for him.  Having a friend meant he was vulnerable.  _And even more so. . . because I like him too._

Ryan turned his face to the window and closed his eyes.  The movement of the car bumping over the poorly-maintained streets lulled him, and the Jackal drifted into unconsciousness unintentionally.  He was aware of nothing more until Horace shook him awake some time later.

"Ryan."

The Jackal started awake, flinching at the feeling of hands clasping his arms. He drew back into the seat even before he opened his eyes and saw Horace looking down at him.

"I found it. We're here." 

"Oh. . . ."  Ryan looked out the window again.  The sun had not risen, but the sky was light around its edges.  _Horace has been driving all night. . . ._

"Thank you," Ryan mumbled as he sat up.  When he flicked his eyes to Horace's face, the Juggernaut smiled at him.

"The building is up there."  The Juggernaut pointed out the windshield, beyond which was a screen of trees.  "I parked here so no one would see the car."

Ryan nodded and got out of the car, escaping Horace's smile.  Horace followed him through the thicket of trees; on the other side, Ryan stopped and looked up at Deadwood.  From the outside, it looked little like Borehamwood: the front gates were different, the windows were no longer ornate, and the cars in front-- belonging to the night staff, Ryan assumed-- were modern.  But inside, the floor plan was the same as Borehamwood's, and Ryan could find his way through the building by touch alone.

"Come on."   Ryan didn't look at Horace as he spoke or as he walked through the locked front gates.  He didn't want to go inside the asylum; it was too much like stepping back in time to his own prison.

_But I have to._   _It may be my only chance at Ascending. . . and Horace came all this way, for me._ Ryan heard the crunch of the lot's gravel beneath Horace's work boots as the Juggernaut followed him, and somehow the sound made Ryan feel better.  He couldn't escape the feeling of comfort that came from knowing he wasn't alone.

\--

to be continued


	5. Chapter 5

Just inside Deadwood Asylum, Ryan and Horace passed unnoticed by a couple orderlies on guard.  Ryan stalked along the sterile yet somehow dingy corridor of the A Block, cringing every time a living human passed close to him.  On either side of the corridor, doors shut on the cells of the least dangerous patients.

"Where are we going?" Horace whispered when there was no one nearby.  He, like Ryan, knew from experience that while it was difficult for humans to hear ghosts, it _was_ possible.

"To where my cell was, in the basement."  Ryan gestured for Horace to follow him as he passed through the closed door at the back of the block.

"Why?"

To be honest, it was because Ryan had no idea what else to do. He didn't know what kind of good he could do in Deadwood now, any more than he had been able to help the patients before.

"I want to see who they have in there now," Ryan finally came up with.

"But what--"  Ryan shushed Horace as an orderly approached, passing two inches from Ryan's bared teeth as the ghost turned his head to follow the man's passage.

Ryan led the way to the basement staircase, and the two spirits descended together.  The bottom of the staircase opened into a fluorescent-lit winding network of hallways, which led to storage rooms, "therapy" chambers. . . and Ryan's cell.  From that direction, Ryan heard the noise of a patient: a desolate, uncontrolled moan.

"There's still someone there," he whispered. "They've got someone in my cell."

"How do you know it's yours?"  Horace stumbled after Ryan as the latter navigated the labyrinth of hallways.

"There's only one cell in the basement," Ryan replied with a grim smirk over his shoulder at Horace.  "It's where they put the worst."

The moans grew louder as they approached, and Ryan realized there was a second low voice, a woman's, mixed with the first.   _Still the same,_ he thought as rage swelled in his sunken chest. _I was gone for such a short time, yet they're already back to teasing the patients, torturing them. . . ._  
  
Ryan rounded a corner and finally came in view of his cell.  He had expected to see a patient there, to see it all happening again with some other madman just like him.  The Jackal had prepared himself for the anger and pain of the sight, like a wound being reopened.  But he found no such thing in the open cell.  Instead, he saw two orderlies, a man and a woman, screwing on the cot inside.

Ryan had one instant of clear thought. There was no prisoner in his cell, and there was nothing in Deadwood that could set him free of his earth-bound existence.

Even as he thought these things, Ryan lunged forward in blind fury. He wasn't sure what he intended to do-- tear the oblivious couple limb from limb, probably-- and a small, logical part of him sat back to watch as it had watched the whores die decades ago. But Horace, forgotten until now, caught him.  Two thick arms wrapped around Ryan's waist and held him still.  Ryan couldn't move, couldn't do anything but watch the man on top of her. . .

_. . . moving so violently he had to be hurting her. **He's trying to kill my mamma!**_ _Ryan Kuhn, aged four, thought, and he screamed. The man gave a startled, feminine shriek and looked at the boy in shock. After a moment of struggling, the man got off of Ryan's mother, him naked and laughable with his scrawny legs and flabby stomach, and staggered towards Ryan. His mother raised herself up on one elbow and looked at Ryan as well, but in her face there was none of the gratitude he had expected. She swore at him, a word he had certainly heard before but never from her, and never directed at him. The man came closer, and Ryan was sure that the adult was going to turn that violent motion on him. The boy closed his eyes and knew nothing else. . . ._

"Ryan, wake up. It's okay, they're gone-- they got scared and ran away when you screamed."  Ryan heard the deep, rasping voice through his memories.  There was a pause, then it continued, "Please, wake up. . . ."

Ryan started and raised his head, aware that tears were running down his torn cheeks. Horace was crouched next to Ryan, holding him in his thick arms.  The Jackal realized that he himself was curled up in a ball on the floor, weeping, just as he had been as a child all those years ago.  He pushed himself into a sitting position and tried to pull away, but Horace doggedly kept his arms around him.  Ryan gave up the struggle and collapsed against the Juggernaut's chest, choking with sobs as his tears overwhelmed him.

_Let it come_ , he thought.  Whatever terrible thing he had tried to hold off all those years by resisting anyone's touch, fighting tears, striking out even through his madness. . . let it come.

Horace rocked back and forth slowly, holding the Jackal against his bullet-torn chest. Ryan wept until the other spirit's blue work shirt was soaked, the old bloodstains fresh and red again with replenished moisture from Ryan's tears. Then his crying abruptly ended, and Ryan found himself still in one piece, clutching the Juggernaut's shoulders with his long, twisted fingers. Horace had touched him, held him, and nothing terrible had happened. It was all right.

"Are you okay now?" Horace asked. Ryan sat up as the other spirit's arms fell away from him.

"Yes.  I'm sorry. It was just. . . just a memory."

"Don't be sorry." Horace looked at him so intently, Ryan turned his own gaze downward, unable to keep meeting the Juggernaut's sunken grey eyes. "Tell me what it was."

Ryan intended to protest, but somehow he ended up telling Horace the story instead. "When I was very young. . . my mother used to bring me on her tricks. I'd have to wait in another room while she screwed the john, and I always heard them and wondered what was going on. So one time I decided to open the door and look.  I saw. . . I thought he was hurting her. Back then I loved her, and I thought this man was trying to kill her or something.  So I screamed." Ryan laughed hollowly. "The next thing I remember is lying on the floor outside the room while they finished. When I saw those two-- here, in _my_ place-- I saw _her_."

Ryan could hardly stand the look of pained sympathy on Horace's face, and he looked away, scowling. "This is all her fault."

Anything Horace could have said at that moment would have been the wrong thing-- and miraculously, he didn't say a word. Instead, he stood and walked over to the cot inside the cell, examining it before he turned back to look at Ryan.

"We should rest. Are you tired?" When Ryan nodded, Horace added, "If you don't want to sleep here, or if you want to be by yourself--"

"No." Ryan stumbled over to the cot and sat on its edge at Horace's feet. "No, I'll stay here."

Horace looked down at him and reached out a hand as if he were going to touch Ryan's hair, but then he drew it back. "Doesn't it. . . hurt? If this is just like where they kept you. . . and since those people reminded you of your mother. . . ."

Ryan shook his head. "It's not really my cell; mine burned down.  And now that those people are gone. . . it's just a room."

Again in silence, Horace walked around to the other side of the cot and lay down. Instead of curling up as usual, Ryan stretched out next to the Juggernaut, watching the other spirit's face. Horace's eyes were closed, but when Ryan slowly put a hand over his, the Juggernaut turned his head to stare at him. Horace's lips parted briefly, then he closed his mouth again and turned on his side, facing Ryan and holding out his free arm.

Ryan hesitated, resisting almost out of duty, but then he slid into the Juggernaut's embrace.  Once Ryan was pressed against his gigantic body, Horace draped his arm over the Jackal's back and held him close.

"What was your family like?" Ryan muttered against Horace's neck. It occurred to him that he didn't know anything about Horace's life, besides the fact that it was spent in a junkyard.

"I don't know who my mom was. She left when I was a baby, but Dad said she was pretty. I lived with him almost all my life, and he taught me how to run the junk yard. He said I was good at it, since I'm so strong."

Ryan envied Horace his absent mother-- if Ryan's had walked out on him, things would have been a lot different.  "What is it like to have a father?"

Horace shrugged. "He was good to me. I know he was ashamed of me . . . every time anyone came by, he had me go to the back to work on something. But he never treated me bad, and I know he loved me. He told me every day."

Jealousy flared in Ryan like a lit match, and he said contemptuously, "So what happened?  Why'd you start killing people?"

Horace's large hand moved up behind Ryan and came to rest at the nape of his neck; Ryan could feel the Juggernaut's fingertips against his hair.  "After Dad died, I had to run the yard by myself. People started messing with me-- they'd come throw things at the trailer or spray graffiti on the junk. So that's why I got the dogs."

Warmth filtered into Horace's voice as he went on. "They were good dogs. They loved me, and they weren't ever ashamed of me." The Juggernaut sighed and curled his fingers into Ryan's hair.  "I wonder what happened to them.   I kept feeding them even after I was killed. . . and they knew I was there.  It was like they could still see me.  But then _he_ came and took me away. . . and now they're gone." There was a long silence before Horace added, "They were all I had to love."

Ryan didn't want to hear about love. "Who did you kill? And why?"

"The first time, it was two girls. They were hitchhikers, and I was going to give them a ride. But when they got in the car, they laughed at me." Horace's voice grew tight with remembered humiliation. "They were whispering to each other about me, when I was trying to help them. So I took them back to the junkyard and broke their necks and fed them to my dogs."

"Damn," Ryan blurted out without thinking. "I just dumped mine in the river."

Horace shrugged, jostling Ryan with the motion. "I didn't have much money to buy dog food. Dad always said never to let anything go to waste. And anyway, it felt so good, making them pay for being mean. It's like. . . they were worthless until I killed them, then they were good for something.  I made them _all_ pay."

"So did I," said Ryan.  "And look where it got us."

"At least. . . we're together."

Ryan tried to think of a sarcastic reply, but nothing came to mind. Instead, all he could think of was that he could be close to Horace without cringing.  He raised his eyes to Horace's face, wondering how this could be.  Horace, his head resting on the cot, looked back.  Ryan couldn't understand his expression; it was wistful, and such a delicate emotion seemed strange on Horace's coarse face.

For the first time, Ryan wanted to touch Horace, as Horace had kept wanting to touch him.  Ryan reached up his hand to stroke the Juggernaut's grey-blonde hair, wrapping a curl of it about his finger. He had killed a girl with hair like that. Otherwise a striking contrast to Horace, she had been petite with large green eyes. He had kissed her before he killed her, just to see if that added anything to the experience. It hadn't, but the thought of her little trembling mouth with its exaggerated Cupid's bow above the upper lip drew his eyes to Horace's mouth now. The Juggernaut's lips were fairly full for a man, and intact rather than ragged and bitten like Ryan's.  

"Ryan?"  Horace's large hand moved to cup the side of Ryan's face; it reached from his chin to his temple.  Ryan shivered but did not draw back from the touch.  Instead, he closed his hand over Horace's and pulled it to his mouth, half-closing his eyes as he drew the tip of his tongue over the Juggernaut's exposed palm.  He wanted to taste Horace as much as touch him.  In fact, he just wanted _Horace_ , and the desire was unlike any he had felt before.  Until now, his only appetite had been for killing, but this was entirely different.

Horace made a low, rumbling noise in his throat as he watched Ryan. . . and Ryan was surprised to find that he _liked_ being watched.  Knowing Horace's eyes were fixed on him, he closed his own eyes and began to caress the Juggernaut's palm open-mouthed.

"Nng. . . Ryan. . . ."  Beside him, Horace squirmed, and when Ryan lifted his eyes again, the Juggernaut's expression had changed from wistful to full of desire.  It frightened Ryan a little because it suggested that he might soon lose control of the situation. . . and being out of control reminded him of being imprisoned in this very spot.  But then, this was Horace, and Ryan was beginning to understand that he had nothing to fear from the Juggernaut.

Ryan let go of Horace's hand and instead reached up to touch his face.  Ryan trailed his clawed fingers along the thick bone of the Juggernaut's jaw as Horace draped both large arms around Ryan's twisted body.  Horace pulled Ryan against him then tilted his head so that their mouths fit together perfectly when he kissed Ryan firmly.

It was nothing like kissing the platinum-haired whore.  Horace's lips fumbled inexpertly over Ryan's, and Ryan assumed the Juggernaut had never kissed anyone before.  Nevertheless, Ryan wanted it; he wanted to be kissed, and he didn't care how awkward it was.  Held close against Horace's body, Ryan felt safe from his memories; caressed by Horace, he felt wanted for the first time he could remember.

Ryan put one hand to the back of Horace's head and laced his fingers into the Juggernaut's hair; his other hand dug its claws into the larger spirit's shoulders.  He returned Horace's kisses with slow, exploratory movements of his tongue.  The motions were unfamiliar to Ryan as well, but both spirits had already grown more skilled by the time they finally broke apart.

Horace didn't speak; in fact, he looked too confused to be able to process a coherent thought.  Ryan felt himself in the same situation.

_What just happened?  I let Horace touch me. . . then I let him kiss me.  And I want him to do it again. . . ._

Ryan lowered his face before that could happen; he already felt too out of control to allow it.  Still, he couldn't hold back from pressing his face against Horace's shoulder, and he didn't try to move from within the Juggernaut's arms.

Horace put a hand to Ryan's head and clumsily petted his long hair.  Even that felt good, and Ryan was almost sorry when Horace stopped.  When he finally drifted into unconsciousness, Ryan was still in the Juggernaut's embrace.

\--

To be continued


	6. Chapter 6

When Ryan woke up, he had no idea how long he'd been unconscious; there was no glimpse of either day or night down there in the basement. He knew that well enough, from the years he'd spent separated from the outside world in a cell identical to this one.

Horace's arm was still draped heavily across Ryan's side, and Ryan had to push it out of the way in order to sit up. The Juggernaut lay perfectly still, and even though Ryan knew intellectually that he didn't need to breathe, it was nevertheless disconcerting that Horace's chest did not move like a sleeping human's would.

Ryan had found his mother like that, just after he had started killing whores. He hadn't killed _her_ ; she had died naturally of a blood clot that moved from her leg to her heart, stopping it.  Still, seeing her lying there as if asleep but not breathing had made him feel guilty all the same. The guilt had in turn angered him, and he killed another girl that night. Seeing Horace so still sent that same cascade of guilt and fear down Ryan's ghostly spine.

Ryan wanted to wake him and reached out his hand to do just that. _No_ , he thought before his claws reached Horace's shoulder, _let him sleep. What do either of us have to wake up to?_

Somehow in the early morning of that day, Ryan had come to understand that he would not find salvation in Deadwood.

_I've already paid my debt here, saving the patients from unnecessary suffering.  And even that was not enough._   Ryan dropped his head into his hands, pushing his claws into the tangled black waves of his hair.  _My sins are too great to be absolved. . . and Horace did all this for me, for nothing._

"Ryan?"  He heard Horace sit up behind him.  "Are you all right?"

"Heh. . . not especially."  Ryan lifted his head but did not look back at the other spirit.  "I'm sorry I made you come here."

"You didn't make me," Horace pointed out.  "I wanted to help you."

"Well, I shouldn't have let you!"  Ryan tugged at the straps on his straitjacket as he went on, "It's hopeless for me.  I can't be saved.  You should have just gone back to the junkyard after we were freed, and left me behind."

"Ryan, I need you."  The words stopped Ryan's bitter, self-indulgent tirade, and he finally turned to stare at Horace.  "And while I was helping you. . . you needed me too."

"I'm sorry," was all Ryan could think of to say.  

Horace lifted a rough hand to Ryan's face, fingers under the Jackal's jaw and thumb resting on his cheek.  The Juggernaut's thumb moved slowly back and forth across Ryan's cheekbone, and he smiled.

_What does he have to smile about?_ Ryan thought. _How can he be happy about anything? If we can't Ascend, nothing else matters_. But no, that wasn't entirely true.

"I do need you," Ryan rasped in a hoarse whisper as he closed his hand over Horace's wrist. It was so thick, Ryan's fingertips didn't touch when he wrapped his hand around it, and for the first time, Ryan thought about how easily Horace could have killed him had he been alive.

"Then we'll go back to the junkyard together," said Horace.

Ryan leaned up and kissed him, touching his closed lips to Horace's in a gesture of gratitude and, well, affection.  Horace's earlier words returned to him: "At least we're together."  Surprisingly, the thought made Ryan feel better.

Ryan followed the Juggernaut up from the basement, then Horace fell back and let Ryan find the way back out of the asylum.  Night had fallen again, and the sky over them was fully dark.  They returned to the car, still hidden where they had left it in the trees, and began the journey back to Willow Grove.

The silence in the car as they drove back towards the town plagued Ryan.  Apparently it bothered Horace too, for he said, "Next thing I'm going to do to the car is add a radio. Shouldn't be too hard. I'll find a working one in a junked car, and then just. . . ."

Ryan didn't pay much attention to what Horace was saying-- he wouldn't have understood the mechanic-talk anyhow-- but the rumble of the Juggernaut's deep voice was comforting. After decades of wanting nothing but to be alone, the Jackal was finally glad for company, as long as the company was Horace.

They were nearing the outskirts of Willow Grove when a car bore down on them and passed them with a swerve and the squeal of tires. As far as Ryan could tell in the dim glow from Horace's headlights, the car was red, one of those funny ones with no tops.

"Wow, look at that," Horace murmured. "1954 Cadillac. . . an Eldorado!"

That meant nothing to Ryan, but he grinned as something occurred to him.  "I hope they look back at us-- they'll think your car is driving itself!"

As if the driver heard him, the red car slowed abruptly in the left lane, honking wildly as Horace shot past it.  However, as the Cadillac sped up and drew even with them once more, Ryan squinted past Horace in disbelief.

"Those aren't humans."

"Hunh?" Horace looked at the wildly gesticulating girl in the passenger seat. Her head was flopped grotesquely to one side of a broken neck.  "You're right-- that's the Bound Woman! She wants me to pull over."

"Don't do it." Ryan folded his arms and glowered at the female ghost in the other car. Horace glared at the girl as well and increased his speed. Whoever was driving the red car kept even with him however, even edging into Horace's lane so that the sides of their cars almost scraped. Horace made a low growling sound in his throat but pulled his car off the side of the road.  
The Cadillac pulled up behind them, and in a moment the Bound Woman appeared at Horace's window. Ryan scowled as she leaned in and put a hand on the Juggernaut's arm.

_Slut,_ Ryan thought grumpily.

"Where have you two been?" she cooed at Horace, though Ryan noticed a rather mocking smirk on her tilted face.

Ryan leaned over Horace and snarled up at her, "Go to hell."  
  
"Aww, did someone get up on the wrong side of the crypt this morning?" She looked towards the back of the car and called, "It _is_ them. I told you, Royce."  After a moment, the Torn Prince came up next to her.

"Nice car," Royce said with a smirk that matched the Bound Woman's. Horace's scowl deepened at the insult to his beloved vehicle.

"What do you want?"

"Actually, we were out looking for you. The rest of us have been working on the Ocularis back at the mansion, ever since you two ran off together," the Bound Woman replied. "The Hammer says he thinks we've fixed it, so we might be able to get out of here."

"You mean. . . if we go back, we might be able to Ascend?" Horace asked.

The Torn Prince shrugged. "We don't know if it will work or not-- no one's tried it yet." He looked at Ryan and raked a hand through the hair on the side of his head that wasn't ripped to shreds. "Didn't you say the Withered Lover was standing on the wheel when she disappeared?"

"Yes, but. . . ." Ryan shook his head. "That thing's just a machine. Her family was there; that's the only reason she was there when she Ascended. She was just saying goodbye to the people she loved." He glared up at the teens and hissed, "I spent enough time trapped there-- I'm not going back! I never want to see that place again."

"Suit yourself." Royce started back to his car, but the Bound Woman leaned down towards Horace, emphasizing her cleavage in the low-cut formal dress she wore.

" _You're_ coming, aren't you?"

"Not if Ryan isn't," said Horace.

"So _that's_ your name," she flung in Ryan's direction, then she leaned on Horace's arm. "Oh come on, why do you have to do what _he_ says?"

Ryan swiped at her with his claws. " _Get off him!_ "

The Bound Woman drew back with a laugh. "Okay, I'll leave your boyfriend alone.  You two will have a lot of fun together when you're stuck on Earth for the rest of eternity."

As she sauntered off, Ryan sat back in his seat, seething. He forgot his own anger however when he looked at Horace. The Juggernaut's large hands were clenched around the steering wheel in fury.

"What's wrong?" Ryan asked, a little afraid to find out. He heard the Cadillac start up behind them, then it retook the road and drive away.

"I hate them," Horace growled. "Just because they're beautiful-- both of them-- they think they can laugh at me and my car."

Ryan shifted uncomfortably in the passenger seat. "They were laughing at me too."

"Only because you're with _me_." Horace leaned his creased forehead against the wheel. "If that bitch was alive, I'd kill her."

"She's a slut-- so I'd kill her too." Ryan was surprised to find himself laughing a little. "You and I seem to have a lot in common."

Horace sat up and even gave him a half-hearted smile. "I guess so.  Ryan. . . do you think. . . maybe we _should_ go back to the mansion just in case the Hammer's right?"

Ryan looked down. "I don't want to go back. But if you think we should. . . all right."

"Ryan. . . ."  Horace put out a hand and petted Ryan's hair again.  It made the Jackal feel a little like a replacement for Horace's dogs, but he allowed it.

When Horace pulled up at what remained of the Kriticos mansion, the red Cadillac was already there. A police car was there too; after Ryan got out of Horace's car and walked toward the house, he found the policeman that was supposed to go in it. It appeared that the Hammer had put an end to his policing days. As Ryan and Horace reached the door frame of the mansion's front entrance, they met the Hammer himself dragging another uniformed corpse out of the house. This one's head was still intact, unlike that of his compatriot, but his shirt was ripped from several gaping knife wounds.

"Angry Princess?" the Jackal asked as the Hammer staggered by. The shackled spirit nodded curtly.  Yellow crime scene tape decorated the house, as it had Horace's junkyard.  The Hammer dragged the body over the tape and left it next to the other cop.

"They've been investigating here during the day." A low female voice made Ryan turn away from the Hammer. The Angry Princess was leaning in the doorway, watching him and Horace.  "And they only left two men guarding the place at night." She shook her bloody head. "Stupid."

"Why'd you kill them?" Ryan moved past her into the house, Horace close behind him.

"We had to, tonight," the Princess said as she followed.  "George and Jimmy have been working on the Ocularis every night since we escaped, without the cops knowing it. But they'd definitely hear something tonight-- we're going to turn it on."

"George and Jimmy?" Horace asked. The Angry Princess walked past them; Ryan scowled at the way Horace's eyes followed her.

"Oh-- the Hammer and the Torso. I forgot, you two missed all the introductions." She looked over her shoulder at them and gave them the faintest of smiles. "Why did you leave so soon?"

"Because we wanted to actually get off this rock instead of playing around with Kriticos's toys," Ryan snapped. They had reached the room where he had seen the Withered Lover disappear, the room that housed the Ocularis Infernum.  Its metal wheels sunk into the floor did seem to be intact now; Ryan's eyes automatically sought out and found the symbol that had been inscribed on the door of his cell in the mansion's basement. The sign of the Jackal.

"Doesn't look like you've done too hot so far." The Bound Woman sauntered over to them. "I thought you weren't coming."  When they didn't answer, she said, "Get to your places-- we're ready to start. You too, Dana," the Bound Woman added snidely.

The Angry Princess-- Dana-- drifted past the other girl and moved to stand beside one of the symbols on the wheel. As Ryan watched, each of the other nine spirits appeared from parts of the house and did the same.   Ryan and Horace, the last two left, looked at one another.

"Well, shall we?" Ryan asked.

"I don't want to," Horace murmured.  His grey eyes turned to study the other ghosts. "It doesn't feel. . . right."

"It was your idea to come back," Ryan grumbled as he took his place next to his symbol.  Horace finally approached as well, leaving only one spot-- the Withered Lover's-- unoccupied.

"Now what?" Ryan folded his arms and glared at the others.

"We found the book that the human used," the Pilgrimess answered him in her rusty croak of a voice. "It explains this machine, the Ocularis Infernum-- the Eye of Hell. That man imprisoned us because it took thirteen spirits to open the eye. He thought that opening it would give him knowledge. . . power."

"So what does it have to do with us?" retorted Ryan.  "I don't care about power _or_ knowledge unless it's the knowledge of how to get out of here."

"Let me finish." The Pilgrimess shot him a sour look. "There were the twelve of us, but it would take a thirteenth to open the Ocularis-- the Broken Heart. Kriticos intended to kill his own brother's child to create this thirteenth spirit."

"But he didn't," Horace interrupted, completely ignoring the Pilgrimess' glower at being interrupted a second time. "We killed Kriticos first, and he didn't fit the sign. So the. . . the eye never opened."

"But there was another." It was not the Pilgrimess who spoke, but the Angry Princess. "Jimmy figured it out. Before we destroyed Kriticos, there was already a thirteenth ghost."

"Who?" Horace blinked at her.

"The man _you_ killed," said Dana.  Ryan looked at Horace in time to see the Juggernaut's blank expression twist into surprise then anger.

"Yes," Horace growled, "the one who helped trap me. He could. . . could see inside me. He _knew everything_ \-- but he didn't stop them.  He didn't help me." Looking into Horace's face, even Ryan felt chilled, and he shrank back a little.

 " _That_ man was the Broken Heart?" Ryan spat at the others, more to distract himself from Horace's fury than any other reason. "How could he be the one?"

"I understand it," Horace muttered with a tone of reluctance. "When I picked him up, when we touched. . . he could see in me, like before. And I could see in him. He loved someone, someone who didn't love him back." Horace turned his deep-set eyes from Dana to Ryan. "His heart _was_ broken.  I had forgotten that, until now."  The anger drained from the Juggernaut's face like blood from a corpse.

Ryan looked away from him. "But if he _was_ the thirteenth ghost, why didn't the Ocularis open? What about all the knowledge and power?"

"It _did_ open." The Pilgrimess took the story up again. "It was what gave the Broken Heart and the Withered Lover the power to Ascend." The vaguest hint of a smile crossed her wrinkled face. "The Kriticos man didn't realize that the power and knowledge of the Eye of Hell went to the spirits who opened it-- not any human who might temporarily control them. We think the humans broke the Ocularis before it could work on all of us. But now that it's repaired and we're all here again-- maybe it will work again."

It didn't seem right to Ryan. He knew the man that the Pilgrimess claimed to be the Broken Heart-- he had helped Kriticos capture Ryan too-- and he vaguely remembered seeing him as a ghost, off to the side when Ryan was more preoccupied with getting revenge on Kriticos. Ryan could buy that part of it, that the whiny little thing loved someone who didn't return his feelings. He could even grant that the Ocularis might have been opened until the house fell to pieces around them. What he _didn't_ believe was that the Eye of Hell had allowed the Withered Lover to Ascend.

_I saw her,_ he thought. _She was standing on it, yes, but it was already broken then. And she was **whole** \-- nothing called the Eye of Hell could make someone so beautiful._ His own thoughts startled him: when had he ever thought of a woman as beautiful in a positive sense? It was true, though. There _had_ been a beauty in the Lover once she was restored to how she looked in life, as she said goodbye to her family. He had read the movement of her lips from afar as she looked back-- _I love you guys_ \-- and thought, _No one ever loved me like that_. There was something beautiful about that, too.

"There's one thing I'm worried about." The words drew Ryan away from his thoughts, back to the other spirits. The Torso-- the one the Princess had called Jimmy-- had spoken. "There are only eleven of us now. Can we open the Ocularis again without the other two?"

"We'll find out," the Hammer replied. "I'm going to the basement to turn it on." When he was gone, Ryan looked at Horace. The tall spirit was staring at the rings on the floor, lips slightly parted and a thoughtful expression on his face.  For the first time, Ryan wondered what would happen if the Ocularis _did_ work, and they all suddenly Ascended. Where would they go. . . and would they be together? _I might never see him again. . ._.

"Horace!" Ryan hissed. The Juggernaut turned to him, but before Ryan could say anything more, the gyres of the Ocularis Infernum came to life with a groan. Ryan cringed, half-expecting everything to disappear at once despite his doubts. However, nothing happened. The gyres continued to spin, slicing the air before them, but that was all.

"What now?" the First Born Son asked. The little boy had his arms folded across his chest in a petulant manner.  As the Hammer returned from the basement, the Pilgrimess looked from him to the Son.

"I don't know, child."  
"Maybe we have to throw someone in for him to Ascend," suggested the Bound Woman, baring her teeth in a grin.

"No," Ryan retorted. "The Withered Lover was standing _beside_ it when she disappeared, and the one you call the Broken Heart wasn't anywhere near it. The only one who went _in_ it was the Kriticos man."

"And you don't see him haunting this place like the rest of us, do you?" the Bound Woman snapped at him. "Maybe only the good ones go peacefully, and the rest of us sinners have to do it the hard way."

"It doesn't make sense," Horace muttered.

"What would _you_ know about sense?" she said with a roll of her wide eyes, all mock flirtation vanished.

"Susan, that doesn't help," the Torn Prince said. To Ryan, it sounded like Royce was holding back a sigh. _What does he see in that bitch anyway?_

"Well, right now, none of us is getting anywhere if the eye _is_ open now," Susan said, raising her voice and speaking to all of them. "Someone's got to try it."

"I don't like it," murmured the Dire Mother. She was holding her giant son's hand tightly, as if she thought Susan were going to wrest him away and throw him in.

"Why don't _you_ try it?" Dana leveled at Susan.

"Because the one who does it should be someone we can lose," Susan sniffed.

At the same time, Royce clutched at Susan's hand convulsively. "Not her."

"Not Dana either," the Torso replied, glaring at the Torn Prince through the shrink wrap that covered his head. . . which was carried under his own arm.

"Well, we can't make the kid do it." Susan motioned towards the First Born Son. "You're a brat, but you're still a kid." He stuck his tongue out at her and made a rather rude gesture no child should know.

The Bound Woman wasn't paying attention to him, however; her gaze had turned to Ryan. " _You_ should do it. You didn't do anything to help get it working again, so it's the least you could do."

"The least I could do is risk getting turned into salad?" he returned.

"It's not like anyone cares about you anyway!" she snarled.

"I do." Horace spoke so quietly, Ryan thought he was the only one who heard. Susan didn't hear at any rate, or else she ignored him. She stalked closer to Ryan, her eyes peering malevolently at him from her twisted head.

"Do it," she hissed, and he got a glimpse of how she had seduced so many boys during her lifetime. Even he, who was not attracted to her in the least, was almost compelled to obey that sibilant voice.

_Almost_. "Not for you, bitch," he growled.

Ryan was totally unprepared for her response: with an incoherent shriek, the Bound Woman leapt at him. As her hands closed over his shoulders, all the old revulsion to being touched swept back, and he swatted at her, striking her across the face so that her broken neck twisted and her head lolled backward. She held on still, shoving him with all her might towards the spinning, slicing Ocularis Infernum.

Taken by surprise, Ryan actually moved several feet closer to the Ocularis under her hands, but he braced himself against her before he was in any real danger. An instant later, Horace had pounced on them both, pulling Ryan to him in one muscled arm and shoving the Bound Woman hard across the room with the other. Ryan dug his claws into Horace's shirt and held on as a wave of dizziness passed through him. Over Horace's shoulder, he saw Royce run to Susan and help her sit up from where she had crashed into the jagged remains of a glass wall.

"I'll do it," Ryan breathed, letting go of Horace and looking at the other spirits, who were watching in a shocked half-circle, "but not for her. If all of you want me to, I'll do it."

" _No!_ " Horace wrapped his arms about Ryan from behind and held him tightly against his chest. "Not you. I'd rather do it myself."

"Horace, let me go," Ryan muttered. "I don't have anything to stay here for anyway. You've got a place to live, and your car, and. . . ."

"No." Horace's arms were stronger than any of the bonds that had held Ryan in Borehamwood.

"Come on!" the Torn Prince yelled. "He _wants_ to go! And it might work. . . ."

"Oh, it's not going to work," Ryan said aloud. "It wouldn't work even if we had another Withered Lover and Broken Heart.  I saw the Withered Lover go-- she wasn't sliced up by this thing. She disappeared, all on her own. I'll go in it if you want, but I won't Ascend." He grinned at them nastily. "You'll be picking bits of me out of your hair for weeks."

"I can handle that," the Bound Woman sniffed as she staggered to her feet. One of her hands clenched Royce's shoulder, the way it had clenched Ryan's.

"No," Horace said again. He bent his head, putting his lips to Ryan's ear so only he could hear.   
"Please. Don't leave me." Then the Juggernaut let Ryan go, dropping his huge arms to his sides. Ryan turned to look up at him; Horace was regarding him miserably, as if he were already gone.

"Turn it off," wheezed the Dire Mother. "Destroy that thing." She had moved back from her place at the edge of the eye, pulling her son with her. "If that's the only way to Ascend, we'll stay here." She looked up at her boy tenderly.

"But why?" the Pilgrimess asked her. "Do you want your son to spend eternity here, when he could be in Heaven?"

"Or Hell," Ryan offered.

The Dire Mother voiced Ryan's earlier thoughts to an almost eerie degree. "We don't know what it's like to Ascend. How do we know we'll still be together? Yes, I'd rather my son spend eternity here with me than to risk being separated from him forever."

"I feel the same way," the Angry Princess added. "I don't want to go if it means going alone."

"Dana--" the Torso began but stopped when she glanced at him with that almost-smile.

When the Hammer spoke, they all turned to stare at him.  "I'm going."

"George, are you sure?" asked the Princess.  Her large, expressive eyes looked at him with pity.

"Yes." When he looked at each of them, Ryan saw that the Hammer's eyes, in contrast, were. . . well, dead. There was no more of the anger he had shown towards the living beings in the house, only exhaustion. "My family has gone ahead of me, years and years ago. If the Ocularis is open to them, then I will join them. And if not. . . I don't want to exist without them anymore." He glanced down at the Torso. "You remember how to turn it off? So you can do it without me?"

Jimmy's shoulders bobbed a little as if he had tried to nod, forgetting his head was not longer attached. Then he said, "Yes," quietly.

"Hold fast to your faith, George," the Pilgrimess murmured.  The Hammer looked at her sadly.

"I will try."

Ryan's prediction of ectoplasm in hair was not accurate.  When the Hammer threw himself into the gyres of the Ocularis Infernum, his ghostly form dissipated completely.  Ryan saw nothing that resembled his vision of the Withered Lover, no sign that the Hammer had Ascended.

Dana began to weep, crouching on the floor with her pale face in her hands. The Torso put an arm around her shaking shoulders and lifted his head in his other hand to look at the others. No one made a move to follow the Hammer's example, and the Bound Woman was finally silent.

"I'm going to shut it off," Jimmy muttered. He gave Dana's shoulders another squeeze, then moved out of the room on his hands, his head tucked under one arm. After a moment, the gyres slowed then fell into place in innocent concentric circles in the floor.

The spirits didn't destroy the Ocularis Infernum; there seemed to be no need. Ryan doubted that any of them would again be tempted to leap in. Somehow the Hammer's quiet destruction had cured even the Bound Woman's to desire to Ascend through those means-- or even to push someone else in. Ryan didn't care how many humans stupidly turned the thing back on and got sliced up by the gyres, as long as the Ocularis Infernum itself stayed closed. He decided that power and knowledge were two things that definitely should be kept out of the world.

At the door to the glass mansion, Ryan stopped and looked back, just in case he could see the Hammer, healed, standing on the same spot as the Withered Lover. He saw nothing.

"At least it wasn't you." Horace was standing at his shoulder. "Thank God it wasn't you."

\--

to be continued


	7. Chapter 7

"There's still a way," the Pilgrimess was saying when Ryan and Horace joined the others outside the mansion. "What I thought from the beginning-- that if we settle our debts, we'll be freed."

"I already tried that," Ryan muttered. "Where do you think we've been all this time?"

"Maybe it takes longer than that," Susan said, her voice unusually quiet. "If we have to pay for years of sins. . . ."

"But do we still want to try?" The Torso's eyes moved from face to face of the other spirits. "Maybe we're better off as we are."

"Better the devil you know," the Dire Mother intoned.

"No. I want to try," said the First Born Son in what Ryan at first dismissed as a stubborn whine. "I want. . . I want to go home." With that sentence, for an instant Ryan saw himself whispering those words to himself, cowering in tears outside a locked door as a john screwed his mother. No, it wasn't stubbornness or whining that made the Son speak, not this time.

The Pilgrimess looked down at the child a moment, then she took his small hand in her wrinkled one. "Then we'll try, son.  The rest of you. . . ." She looked at the others. "God be with you."

"Like He ever has been before," Susan muttered to Royce, but not loud enough for the Pilgrimess to hear.

"Let's go," the Torn Prince said to her, putting an arm around her shoulders and turning her towards his car.

"Where are you going?" Dana called after them. Royce just raised his shoulders in a shrug without looking back. Susan extended her middle finger over her shoulder in the Princess' direction.

"Never mind them. Where are _you_ going?" Jimmy asked, lifting his head to look up at her.

"I don't know.  Let's go somewhere together." She crouched down and touched his cheek. "Wherever you want, anywhere. . . we've got all the time in the world."

"That's good. It'll take me that long to get down the street," the Torso replied with surprising good humor.

"I have a car, over there," Horace pointed, breaking into their conversation. "You can have it."  Ryan stared at him, but Horace was focused on the couple.

"You're sure?" Dana got to her feet and smiled at him, a full smile this time. "Thank you."

"Can you take me back to the junkyard before you leave?" asked Horace. "It's not far."

"Of course." Dana looked at the other four: the Pilgrimess, the First Born Son, the Great Child, and the Dire Mother. "What about you?"

"Don't worry about us, child," the Pilgrimess replied. "We'll find our way. You take yours."

Dana seemed about to speak again, but she only nodded and turned toward where Horace had left his car. Jimmy followed her on his hands, then Horace lifted him into the passenger seat as Dana got behind the wheel. Watching them, Ryan felt a choking sensation in his chest, as if he still had a heart, and it had stopped.

Then Horace looked at him from over the top of the car. "Ryan, are you. . . ."

_If I go with him, I may be in that junkyard for eternity,_ Ryan thought. _And if I don't, I'll be alone for just as long._

He took one crooked step forward, hesitated, then went to the car. "I'm coming."

After Horace's brief directions, they were all silent as Dana drove them to the junkyard and stopped at the gates.  The cut lock lay on the ground, and the gates were still unchained.

The Angry Princess leaned out of the car's window after Horace and Ryan had gotten out.  "Thank you," she said again.

"I hope you'll be happy," Horace replied.

The Angry Princess smiled. "We will be."

Ryan looked up at Horace as Dana drove away, but there was no trace of sorrow or misgiving on the Juggernaut's face.

"Why?" Ryan asked, bewildered. "Why did you give them your car?"

"They need it more than I do.  I can build another one." Something seemed to flicker in Ryan's eyes for an instant, and Horace altered; for one precious instant, his bullet-ridden flesh was whole again, his clothing without tears, his skin free of its blue-grey tint. He was still a giant, but he was human.

_That's how he looked when he was alive,_ Ryan realized. As grotesque as his human form was, Horace was beautiful, the same way that Jean Kriticos had been beautiful when she said goodbye to her family. _Oh God,_ Ryan thought, _he's going to Ascend. . . ._

And then the flicker faded and Horace Mahoney was the Juggernaut again, only a ghost.

The sky had begun to grow light by the time they reached Horace's garage shed in the back of the junkyard. Ryan's twisted limbs ached with exhaustion, and he slumped against the side of the building as Horace looked thoughtfully at the space where his car had been.

"Aren't you tired?" grumbled Ryan.

"You go rest," Horace murmured. "I'm going to find a new chassis to work on."

Ryan gaped at him.  "You're starting another car _now_?"

Horace was already stalking towards a stack of junked cars. "I'm just looking."

Ryan rolled his eyes and went inside. As he collapsed on Horace's cot, he thought, _So this is where I'll spend the rest of eternity. . . . but it could be worse. I could be alone._

Ryan drifted into unconsciousness for a while. When he was next aware, the noon sun was dimly penetrating the garage, and Horace was resting beside him. Ryan raised himself on one elbow and looked down at his companion's face, imagining how Horace had looked when he was alive.  
  
 _Giving up his car was almost enough_ , Ryan thought as he gazed at the Juggernaut. _Just one act of complete selflessness._  Maybe that was the key, selflessness. . . .

"Horace." Ryan shook the Juggernaut's shoulder until the other spirit groaned faintly and dragged open his deep-set grey eyes. "Why did you let the Angry Princess and the Torso have your car?"

"I told you," Horace muttered drowsily, "they needed it more than we do. They wanted to go places. . . and we don't have anywhere to go."

"That's not what I mean," persisted Ryan.  "Did you do it because you thought it might let you Ascend?"

"Hunh? Course not. Ryan, I did too many bad things for that to work. I just wanted 'em to have the car."

Selflessness, without expectation of a reward.  Horace, despite all his rage and violence, did have some desire to help other people-- and as small as it was, it was almost enough.

"Horace. . . you nearly Ascended. I saw you." Horace's eyes widened slightly and Ryan looked away.  "You looked. . . like the Withered Lover did. Like you were alive again."

"But I don't want to go."

Ryan turned his mismatched eyes back to the Juggernaut's. " _Why_?"

"I don't want to leave you." Horace reached up both huge hands and laid them on either side of Ryan's face. "I need you. I don't care about the car or _anything_ like I care about you. And I'm not going to Ascend, even if I get the power to, because it would mean being away from you."

Ryan didn't say anything because he could think of nothing _to_ say. Horace let him go and sat up on the edge of the cot, facing away from him.  The Jackal looked at him a moment then stretched out one hand towards the Juggernaut and lightly trailed his claws down Horace's broad back. Horace's work shirt rippled as a shiver moved through him, and he looked over his shoulder at Ryan.

"Do you still want to touch me?" Ryan murmured in a husky voice he hadn't used since he committed his last murder. When Horace nodded, Ryan lay down again on his back, their positions of a few moments ago reversed: now Horace was the one looking down at him. The Juggernaut shifted to face him and put his hand back to the side of Ryan's face.  He curled his hand over the Jackal's chin, holding Ryan's head still as Horace leaned down and kissed him.

The feeling of Horace's open mouth locked over his sent a thrill through Ryan's ghostly body, a more intense sensation than any he had felt in his corporeal form.  When Ryan laced the fingers of one hand in Horace's hair and pressed their mouths together harder, Horace thrust his tongue deeply into Ryan's mouth in response.

Horace pulled back after a moment and looked down at him, drawing his hands over Ryan's thin chest then down his bent arms. "You're so beautiful," the Juggernaut whispered.

Ryan had certainly never expected to hear those words after his death.  "You really mean that?"

Horace nodded.  "Ryan, I. . . ."  He wrapped his huge arms around Ryan's delicate frame and held him, pressing his lips to Ryan's dark hair as he mumbled, "I love you."

Ryan's fingers moved in Horace's hair, stroking it over the back of his neck.  "I love you too," he said as he pressed his face to the Juggernaut's neck.  "Horace, I won't leave you."

\--

That day, Ryan finally dreamed. He was a child again, four years old, at home with his mother the morning after he had seen the john with her.

_"Ryan?"_

_He was silent. She knelt down into his line of vision._

_"I'm sorry I yelled at you, dear. You just. . . surprised us."_

_Finally his curiosity got the better of his sulkiness. "Was he hurting you?"_

_"No, of course not. I just have to. . . spend some time with him, and he'll give me money to buy us things." A slender, pale hand reached out and stroked his dark hair. "It doesn't hurt me at all. It's just what I have to do to take care of us."_

_"What were you doing with him?"_

_"It's. . . what somebody does when she loves someone."_

_"Oh." Ryan thought about this for a minute. "Do you love him?"_

_She laughed a little. Her laughter sounded a lot like crying. "No, I don't love him. But I do love **you**."_

Ryan opened his eyes to near-darkness; night was falling, and only a few last rays of the sunset reached through the cracks of the garage's walls. Horace was still beside him, unconscious with one heavy arm draped over Ryan's waist. Ryan sat up slowly so as not to wake him, carefully shifting Horace's arm so that he could sit on the edge of the cot.

A century had obscured the knowledge that now consumed Ryan more painfully than the flames of Borehamwood: his mother had loved him.

There wasn't anything especially beautiful about her love. No matter how much she had cared for him, it didn't change the fact that she slept with men for her living. Yet her prostitution was the very cause of his existence, both of his birth and his survival. It was the only thing she knew, the only way she could show her love for him. And he had hated her for it, hated her enough to kill every woman he could who reminded him of her.

"I'm sorry," he murmured into the dim room, speaking to her, to the platinum-haired girl with the soft curving lips, to all the others he had killed. To everyone they might have loved, for whom they had sold themselves to callous strangers. To the Withered Lover's daughter whom he had attacked because she looked so like the photographs of his mother when she was young. To the exponential chain of sins, of victims.

Ryan rubbed tiredly at his eyes with the heels of his hands. When he lowered his hands, he noticed something unusual about them; it took him a moment of staring to realize what it was.

His claws were gone.

Nervousness washed over him, making his chest feel as if someone were squeezing it in a giant hand. Ryan brought a hand to his forehead and found no slashes, only smooth skin. He leapt to his feet and looked around the garage. His eyes fell on a car side mirror lying forgotten on a workbench. Ryan stalked over to the bench and caught the mirror up.

His eyes had been the only things left unchanged after his death, and they were the same now, one still blue and the other brown. The other features he saw in the mirror, however, belonged to a face he hadn't seen in decades. . . his face as it had been when he was alive. Ryan gave a choked laugh as he brought a hand to his cheek, still pale but flesh-colored instead of tinged with grey.

So that was it; that was all it took. An apology, and he was free.  Or maybe it was just that he had finally quit feeling sorry for himself; for the first time he had admitted that he was responsible for his own actions.

Whatever the reason, Ryan could feel the ties that held him to the earth loosening. It seemed that he could let go as easily as he could let the mirror slip from his fingers, that as the mirror fell, he would Ascend.

Horace stirred on the cot behind him. "Mmn, Ryan?" he mumbled half-coherently.

Ryan imagined the mirror shattering on the concrete floor.

"Yeah. I'm over here."

"What're you doing?"

"Looking at this." Ryan held the mirror up over his shoulder, keeping his back to the Juggernaut. "When you start your next car, I think you should put this on it."

"Yeah?  I only got one, so the other side of the car wouldn't match. But if you want it on there, I'll do it."

Ryan heard Horace get up and move towards him, and he clenched his fingers tighter around the mirror. Behind him, Horace laid his hands on Ryan's waist, tentatively at first, then squeezing his sides gently.

"Are you okay?"

Ryan lowered the mirror and looked down at it in his hand. The fingers curled over it bore long, ragged claws once more.

"Yes." He laid the mirror down and turned to face the Juggernaut. "I'm fine." He grasped Horace by the shoulders and rocked up on his toes to kiss him hard.

"Mmgh," Horace moaned into his mouth.  As Ryan drew back, Horace stammered, "I-I was gonna go work on the car, but I guess it can wait."

"Yeah." Ryan pressed his lips to Horace's neck and murmured, "It can wait. We'll be here a long time."

\--

The End


End file.
